Go With the Pros and Grab Blackstone

Editor's Note: Jon D. Markman writes a weekly column for CNBC on MSN Money that is republished here on TheStreet.com.

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They don't let teenagers into the operating room to perform lung transplants. They don't let Little Leaguers climb into the batter's box to face Roger Clemens. But in the stock market, anything goes: Your average butcher, baker and candlestick maker can punch a "buy" button online and trade any day of the week against the canniest pros on Wall Street.

Most of the time, the competition is a total mismatch, so when you see situations in which the pros and amateurs are at extreme opposite ends of a trade, it grabs your attention. And right now, my friends, it's Godzilla vs. the Baby-Sitters Club as retail investors flee the U.S. stock market at a time when corporations and insiders are stealthily scooping up equities left and right.

Maybe the amateurs will get it right this time -- who knows? But the odds favor the pros, and unlike in the movies, this is a game where underdogs have a terrible record.

Amateur Hour

How much do retail investors hate American stocks? Let me count the ways. In July alone, U.S. equity mutual funds saw $11.6 billion pour out of the door, the highest one-month outflow since September 2002, according to the California research firm TrimTabs. In the past three months, outflow from U.S. equity funds has totaled $24.7 billion, the greatest draining of market capitalization since the third quarter of 2002. Most of it is not going under the mattress: $9.7 billion piled up in global equity funds last month, while $7.76 billion went to bond funds.